Today’s selection of space policy related links

• Shutdown’s Effect on Three Commercial Crew Companies Varies – SpaceNews.com
• Former NASA Managers Call for More Spending Despite Crunch – SpaceNews.com
• Is the U.S. Passing the Spaceflight Baton to China? – Space.com
• China Looms as Main Launch Competition, SpaceX Says – Space.com
• NASA’s $1.2 Billion Mistake Proves Something Every Libertarian Knows – PolicyMic
• Planetary Resources, Blue Origin, Andrews Space, Aerojet hit by NASA shutdown – Puget Sound Business Journal
• Rep. Mo Brooks sponsors bill to get NASA workers back on the job – AL.com

Update: JACOBS: How Congress destroyed the space program – Washington Times –

Commercial space companies such as Mr. Musk’s SpaceX are roaring onto the scene. They have brought launch costs to LEO (the realm of the ISS and an essential zone for planning deeper missions and projects in space) to their lowest in history. The Falcon-9 could arguably achieve more than any rocket of its class and went from drawing board to completion in 4 years for a measly $300 million.

[…]

Nor is SpaceX alone. Companies such as Blue Origin compete with SpaceX in their pursuit of cheaper launch options, while other firms, such as Planetary Resources, aim to exploit the prodigious resources of the high frontier, and still others such as Bigelow Aerospace seek to accelerate the development of human space habitats.

[…]

Imagine what could be done if resources being thrown into the furnace for the Space Launch System was repurposed for technology incubation, commercial projects, or heaven forbid, actual missions. For the cost of SLS, you could afford close to 170 launches to the ISS, 55 missions to Mars with cargo or for probes, or more than 220 Falcon Heavy launches. There are opportunity costs to funding bad projects, and funding SLS costs mankind nearly 500 opportunities to actually go to space.

Update: How Congress Screwed Up Human Spaceflight – Transterrestrial Musings

Responding to Jacobs comments on the cancelation of the Constellation program by the Obama administration:

[…]  A reader would imagine that Constellation was just peachy, but it was just as programmatically disastrous as SLS, slipping more than a year per year in schedule with continuously ballooning costs. It (like SLS) needed to be cancelled. The mistake of the administration was not in cancelling it, but in not working with Congress in doing so, or providing a coherent explanation of what the replacement was to be. Constellation may have been “fiercely lauded” by some in the scientific and space community, but it was just as fiercely, and justly, attacked as a barrier, rather than a mean of serious human spaceflight beyond earth orbit. It’s curious that Mr. Jacobs seems to understand the current problem without understanding the actual history that led up to it.